Filter cassette for high volume air sampler

Filter cassette eliminates or substantially reduces contamination of filter media by extraneous material and facilitates handling

Optical and Morphological Studies of Thermally Vacuum Evaporated ZnSe Thin Films

Zinc selenide (ZnSe) thin films were deposited on optical glass substrates using thermal vacuum evaporation, by sublimation of zinc selenide powder from a single quartz crucible heated at 600 degrees C. The substrates temperatures were maintained constant during deposition at 220 degrees C. All the samples were subjected to post - deposition thermal treatments in the same deposition chamber, at 250 degrees C for 20 minutes. AFM and SEM studies confirmed that post - deposition annealing improved the grains growth and their distribution over the entire surface of the film. Optical constants (refraction indices and extinction coefficients) of semiconducting ZnSe thin films were measured by spectroscopic ellipsometry in the range of 190 nm to 500 nm. Optical measurements were completed with the spectral dependencies of transmission and absorption using a double beam UV - VIS spectrophotometer. The values for optical bandgaps calculated from the absorption spectra were found to be around 2.7 eV. All these results lead to the conclusion, that ZnSe thin films are good candidates to replace the conventional CdS thin films used as n-type window layers in the thin film heterojunction solar cells

Neutrino masses and μ\mu terms in a supersymmetric extra U(1) model

We propose a supersymmetric extra U(1) model, which can generate small neutrino masses and necessary $\mu$ terms, simultaneously. Fields including quarks and leptons are embedded in three ${\bf 27}$s of $E_6$ in a different way among generations. The model has an extra U(1) gauge symmetry at TeV regions, which has discriminating features from other models studied previously. Since a neutrino mass matrix induced in the model has a constrained texture with limited parameters, it can give a prediction. If we impose neutrino oscillation data to fix those parameters, a value of $\sin\theta_{13}$ can be determined. We also discuss several phenomenological features which are discriminated from the ones of the MSSM.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures, final version for publicatio

Multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain: a systematic review of interventions and outcomes

Objectives. To provide an overview of the effectiveness of multidisciplinary treatments of chronic pain and investigate about their differential effects on outcome in various pain conditions and of different multidisciplinary treatments, settings or durations. Methods. In this article, the authors performed a systematic review of all currently available randomized controlled trials (RCTs) fulfilling the inclusion criteria, by using a recently developed rating system aimed to assess the strength of evidence with regard to the methodological quality of the trials. Results. Compared with other non-disciplinary treatments, moderate evidence of higher effectiveness for multidisciplinary interventions was shown. In contrast to no treatment or standard medical treatment, strong evidence was detected in favour of multidisciplinary treatments. The evidence that comprehensive inpatient programmes were more beneficial that outpatient programmes was moderate. Fibromyalgia and chronic back pain patients tended to profit more substantially than patients with diverse origins or chronic pain diagnoses. No evidence was found that treatment variables, such as duration or programme components, were influential for the success of the intervention. Conclusion. A standard of multidisciplinary programmes should be internationally established to guarantee generally good outcomes in the treatment of chronic pain. Our results highlight the lack of quality of design, execution or reporting of many of the RCTs included in this article. Future studies should more specifically focus on differential effects of treatment components and patient variables, allowing the identification of subgroups, which most probably would profit from multidisciplinary pain programme

I/O-efficient map overlay and point location in low-density subdivisions

We present improved and simplified i/o-efficient algorithms for two problems on planar low-density subdivisions, namely map overlay and point location. More precisely, we show how to preprocess a lowdensity subdivision with n edges in O(sort(n)) i/o’s into a compressed linear quadtree such that one can: (i) compute the overlay of two such preprocessed subdivisions in O(scan(n)) i/o’s, where n is the total number of edges in the two subdivisions, (ii) answer a single point location query in O(logB n) i/o’s and k batched point location queries in O(scan(n) + sort(k)) i/o’s. For the special case where the subdivision is a fat triangulation, we show how to obtain the same bounds with an ordinary (uncompressed) quadtree, and we show how to make the structure fully dynamic using O(logB n) i/o’s per update. Our algorithms and data structures improve on the previous best known bounds for general subdivisions both in the number of i/o’s and storage usage, they are significantly simpler, and several of our algorithms are cache-oblivious

I/O-efficient map overlay and point location in low-density subdivisions

We present improved and simplified i/o-efficient algorithms for two problems on planar low-density subdivisions, namely map overlay and point location. More precisely, we show how to preprocess a lowdensity subdivision with n edges in O(sort(n)) i/o’s into a compressed linear quadtree such that one can: (i) compute the overlay of two such preprocessed subdivisions in O(scan(n)) i/o’s, where n is the total number of edges in the two subdivisions, (ii) answer a single point location query in O(logB n) i/o’s and k batched point location queries in O(scan(n) + sort(k)) i/o’s. For the special case where the subdivision is a fat triangulation, we show how to obtain the same bounds with an ordinary (uncompressed) quadtree, and we show how to make the structure fully dynamic using O(logB n) i/o’s per update. Our algorithms and data structures improve on the previous best known bounds for general subdivisions both in the number of i/o’s and storage usage, they are significantly simpler, and several of our algorithms are cache-oblivious

An economic assessment of ecological practices in Scotland

An early adoption of ecological management practices by farmers is a potential route to achieve sustainable and greener goals for agriculture. This briefing note outlines an economic assessment of four different ecological practices on Scottish livestock farms. The ecological practices used are; ecological area, reducing farm inputs, organic adoption and agro-forestry. The results suggest that ecological area and reduced farm inputs have potential financial benefits on farms and can be easily adopted by farmers. The organic and agro-forestry systems, however, require capital investment to establish and hence provide a challenging prospect of adoption without a provision of financial support<br/

Open and / or laparoscopic surgical treatment of liver hydatic cysts

Hydatid disease is a severe parasitic disease with a widely ranging distribution. In the human being the liver is the most frequent organ affected. 1 The treatment should be individualized to the morphology, size, number and location of the cysts, that is why a variety of surgical operations have been advocated from complete resection like total pericystectomy or partial hepatectomy to laparoscopy to a minimally invasive procedures like percutaneous aspiration of cysts to conservative drug therapy. 3-4 This study compares laparoscopic versus open management of the hydatid cyst of liver the surgical approach to liver echinococcosis is still a controversial issue and shows our results of surgical treatment of liver hydatid cysts during a 3-years period

The Whole Heliosphere Interval in the Context of a Long and Structured Solar Minimum: An Overview from Sun to Earth

Throughout months of extremely low solar activity during the recent extended solar-cycle minimum, structural evolution continued to be observed from the Sun through the solar wind and to the Earth. In 2008, the presence of long-lived and large low-latitude coronal holes meant that geospace was periodically impacted by high-speed streams, even though solar irradiance, activity, and interplanetary magnetic fields had reached levels as low as, or lower than, observed in past minima. This time period, which includes the first Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI 1: Carrington Rotation (CR) 2068), illustrates the effects of fast solar-wind streams on the Earth in an otherwise quiet heliosphere. By the end of 2008, sunspots and solar irradiance had reached their lowest levels for this minimum (e.g., WHI 2: CR 2078), and continued solar magnetic-flux evolution had led to a flattening of the heliospheric current sheet and the decay of the low-latitude coronal holes and associated Earth-intersecting high-speed solar-wind streams. As the new solar cycle slowly began, solar-wind and geospace observables stayed low or continued to decline, reaching very low levels by June – July 2009. At this point (e.g., WHI 3: CR 2085) the Sun–Earth system, taken as a whole, was at its quietest. In this article we present an overview of observations that span the period 2008 – 2009, with highlighted discussion of CRs 2068, 2078, and 2085. We show side-by-side observables from the Sun’s interior through its surface and atmosphere, through the solar wind and heliosphere and to the Earth’s space environment and upper atmosphere, and reference detailed studies of these various regimes within this topical issue and elsewhere

On the construction of model Hamiltonians for adiabatic quantum computation and its application to finding low energy conformations of lattice protein models

In this report, we explore the use of a quantum optimization algorithm for obtaining low energy conformations of protein models. We discuss mappings between protein models and optimization variables, which are in turn mapped to a system of coupled quantum bits. General strategies are given for constructing Hamiltonians to be used to solve optimization problems of physical/chemical/biological interest via quantum computation by adiabatic evolution. As an example, we implement the Hamiltonian corresponding to the Hydrophobic-Polar (HP) model for protein folding. Furthermore, we present an approach to reduce the resulting Hamiltonian to two-body terms gearing towards an experimental realization.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figure